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Could Toronto and the GTA be a National Park City? One U.K. ‘guerrilla geographer’ thinks so

In summer, when in full bloom, it really looks it too, especially from above with taller buildings poking out of the green canopy. What if Toronto was a city within a national park though?

That’s the idea “guerrilla geographer” Daniel Raven-Ellison was in town to talk about last week. He’s been leading a campaign from his home in London, U.K., to get cities designated a National Park City.

“It’s all about making life in cities greener, healthier and wilder, and inspiring more people to enjoy spending time outdoors,” he says. “Just like a rural national park, a National Park City is a place you can explore, a vision you can share and a community you can be part of.”

A city park and a national park conjure two different images. A city park is manicured. The lawns are mowed, flowers are planted, and there might be soccer pitches, tennis courts and children’s play equipment there too. The image of a national park might have hiking trails, wild animals and lots and lots of wilderness.

The National Park City notion brings these two images together. Raven-Ellison, a former geography teacher, came up with the idea when he walked 1,686 kilometres across 69 cities and 15 national parks in the U.K. He also noticed he didn’t see children playing in London’s more natural areas, and he wondered why urban areas couldn’t be treated the same way national parks were.

Raven-Ellison’s talk was sponsored by Park People, a Toronto organization that promotes and supports city parks, and Parks Canada, who represent the Rouge National Urban Park on the city’s east side. Of Rouge Park, Canada’s first urban national park, Raven-Ellison says Toronto is fortunate to have such a great space that is so accessible.

Rouge Park, along with the rest of the ravine network, makes the entire GTA an interesting National Park City candidate. Despite this being Canada’s biggest urban area, large parts of it are a kind of hybrid wilderness. Regular ravine visitors know sightings of deer, coyote, foxes, snakes, beavers, groundhogs, hawks and other wildlife are common, even a few minutes from the density of Yonge and Bloor.

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Still, in environmental circles or otherwise, there’s often a sense that urban nature isn’t “real” or “pure” and that human development compromises it all. Raven-Ellison doesn’t have much time for that kind of thinking.

“Urban life is not worth less than rural life,” he says. “Urban raccoons are as important as rural raccoons.”

He goes on to say people deserve to live in healthy habitats just as we would expect for wildlife and that because cities are where most people are, they have a great ability to protect nature, if they choose to, and to create more of it on balconies, in backyard gardens and in other city spaces.

“Urban landscapes are different than deserts, rainforests, mountains or glaciers, but they are just as interesting to enjoy, explore and go on adventures in,” he says. This point can’t be underestimated. We sometimes travel hundreds of kilometres for the kinds of exploratory experiences we can have right here in the city, like going on a ravine hike or, say, skiing the city during a blizzard.

All of this seems obvious, but there are real conceptual barriers that prevent us from easily thinking this way that, in theory, a National Park City designation would minimize.

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Apart from an increased engagement in the city’s natural areas there would, ideally, be increased protections for these areas and the wildlife in them. Toronto’s Ravine Strategy, which recently won an Award of Excellence from the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, is another way this city is an ideal candidate. However, as is our low tax style, it is a strategy without funding.

Raven-Ellison says should Toronto become a National Park City many residents would start seeing more opportunities to make the city greener, healthier and wilder.

“These could be things like more clean air, more outdoor learning in schools, more wildlife in gardens, more outdoor art and more urban hiking,” he says. “More tangibly and in the longer term, on the ground and from space, I think people will be able to see the city become physically greener. That means more green and flower-rich gardens, parks, roofs, walls and streets.”

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What if Toronto was a National Park City? That’s the question Raven-Ellison says we should ask and start to answer if we’d like the idea to sprout here. “What might that mean for your street, your school, your local river, sports or arts club?”

Except for the haters, most of us have already learned to live with raccoons, wild animals that live sidewalk-style lives next to ours. Why not take it a little further?

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